response 136 of 189:

Jan 26 13:42 UTC 2000

Assuming this merger goes through, the four major labels will be:
   Universal Music Group (formerly MCA and Polygram, merged 1998, and
                          owned by Seagram's)
   Warner Music EMI   (owned by AOL Time Warner)
   Sony Music         (Columbia is their major label in the US for pop)
   BMG                (European conglomerate Bertelsmann)

response 138 of 189:

Feb 9 06:29 UTC 2000

 From the New York Times, February 1:  Neil Strauss writes a piece about 
bluegrass musician Johnny Staats, who has just signed a major label
contract with a Time-Warner imprint, but who has chosen to keep 
his day job as a UPS truck driver.  In discussing the new unpredictability
of the music business and the number of artists being cut from their 
major-label deals, Strauss mentions:  "the difficulty of breaking
even on any release that sells less than half a million copies..."

What?  500,000 is now the breakeven point?  That's halfway to platinum
status...

response 140 of 189:

Feb 9 21:48 UTC 2000

Just looking up the word 'recoupable' in the dictionary should scare most
people out of the music business.

I'm not surprised by that statement Ken, selling 50,000 units is an amazing
feat, but it won't make you *any* money if you're on a major...it will gross
about a half a million bucks for the label though...

response 142 of 189:

Feb 9 22:33 UTC 2000

I looked it up on www.riaa.com.  A Gold Record award is for sales of 500,000.
This used to be an exceptional, award-worthy number of sales, but according 
to Strauss it is now the typical breakeven point for the majors.
It sounds like record company costs have spun completely out of 
control for the major labels.

response 144 of 189:

Feb 18 22:00 UTC 2000

It's like credit cards.  First, a gold record (or card) was something 
special.  Then it became ordinary.  Now it's platinum that's becoming 
ordinary.  What will be next?

(And we had stars, then superstars, then megastars, and now we're 
getting gigastars.  Sheesh!)

response 146 of 189:

Mar 27 22:18 UTC 2000

item: http://music.zdnet.com/news/2000_03_20_cdnow.html
 
The investors' journal Barrons has a death watch list of 51 
Internet businesses which are running out of money.  Included in 
that list is CDNow.com, which was the premier retailer of CDs on the 
net for quite a few years.  
 
The CDNow/Columbia House merger which we wrote about somewhere in this
conference fell apart, because it turned out that neither party to the
merger was making much profit.  CDNow has about six months of cash 
available to it right now.
 
My personal opinion is that Amazon.com is killing them with a much 
better web site.

response 148 of 189:

Mar 29 19:24 UTC 2000

Not with a move to electronic distribution.

response 150 of 189:

Mar 31 17:21 UTC 2000

Not if the "items" are encoded and delivered online.

response 152 of 189:

Jun 14 22:39 UTC 2000

News item:  Seagram, owner of the largest (or maybe second largest) 
record company, the Universal Music Group, is in negotiations to be 
acquired by a French media conglomerate.
 
News item:  the world music label Wicklow, headed by Paddy Moloney
of the Chieftains, is now in limbo.    I expected this, as 
Wicklow was run as part of BMG's classical music division, and 
that classical music division is being dismantled.
Wicklow has put out some very nice albums by Sin E', Mary Jane Lamond
and Varttina; get them before they all go out of print, I guess.
I don't even know if the new Varttina is available in the USA yet.

response 154 of 189:

Jul 21 16:05 UTC 2000

You may recall that CD Now was probably the biggest of the dot-com 
retailers on the death-watch list.  Cnet reports today that Bertelsmann,
one of the four remaining major labels, is buying CD Now for $117 million.

CDNow says it will continue to operate its retail shop under that 
brandname.  Bertelsmann gets the experience that CD Now has accumulated
running one of the largest music-related sites.  The deal is seen as 
win for both companies.  CD Now stock peaked at $25/share, and the buyout
is at $3/share.

response 156 of 189:

Jul 22 08:11 UTC 2000

  I've been listening to a lot of The The albums lately (and, incidentally,
  have unfortunately been discovering that the one I like best is the one I
  bought first..  I hate it when you start buying a band's catalog hoping to
  discover more of what attracted you in the first place and just don't find
  what you were looking for..)

  I'll probably actually take advantage of the chance to download a track a
  week from his latest in order to decide whether I want to buy it.

response 158 of 189:

Jul 24 05:03 UTC 2000

  I kind of agree with your criticisms of Johnson -- I think he's 
  produced enough good work to show what he's capable of, and piles
  and piles of pretentious dreck (e.g. the "Mind Bomb" album)
  I've been very frustrated listening to the The The albums I've
  bought lately, even considering that they were heavily discounted.

  It's undoubtedly significant that I think the best thing he's done
  was an album where he didn't write a single one of the songs --
  "Hanky Panky", his album of Hank Williams (Sr.) covers.  His blazing
  cover of "I Saw the Light" is far better than anything he's done
  performing his own material, much of which suffers from embarrassingly
  sophomoric lyrics.